Perhaps it’s not so much that our hearts awaken one day, but that we finally notice they’ve been awake all along—like a candlelight we forgot to tend. For me, that realization has come through a
lifelong apprenticeship to death and the ache it leaves behind.
Over these past decades, I’ve witnessed the unspeakable: fear flashing through the eyes of
those who know they’re terminal, and panic in the hearts of those left behind, contorted by the impossible bargain for more time. Our culture tells us not to look too closely at this. But life, and death, doesn’t care for our comfort or our timetables. The bullet train arrives precisely when it will, and no incantation or pleas for reprieve can halt its course.
I imagine my listeners share a thread of this knowing—whether they’ve stood vigil at a deathbed yet or not. They sense that the day will come when “that elephant in the room” becomes impossible to ignore, and they’ll be left stammering for words that might comfort without betraying the enormity of
the moment.
It’s a lonely vigil, and fear often casts shadows, tricking us into silence or avoidance. Dying is an event that is aligned to the illusion of the
passage of time and it reveals the heartbreak of our common illusions. We discover that what we sought to outrun—to postpone—was teaching us all along: acceptance, surrender, and perhaps the final frontier, unconditional love.
And what of unconditional love? It’s both smaller and grander than we imagine. Smaller, in that it doesn’t always make for pretty moments; it can look like trembling arms that keep holding the hand of someone slipping away. Grander, because it dares us to keep our hearts open as the door of life slams shut behind a soul. Grander, because it insists that we witness—truly witness—another’s final breath and not turn
away.
I’ve stood in that threshold more than once. I held my sister in December as she took her last breath, remembering just a few years prior doing the same for my
husband, Darryl. Each time, my so-called heart breaks a little more, except it’s not truly a breaking. It’s an unmasking. A revelation that there’s been no real barrier there—only a story that I carried about the bowling ball size of the hole in my chest.
I thought, after Darryl passed, that I’d lost my mooring. I left my beloved dreamy life in Australia in the deep of winter solstice, raw with complicated grief, feeling as if I had an wound in my being that was impossible to hide. I landed in Toronto at the summer solstice, halfway around the world, uncertain of everything but the presence of my own sorrow.
People might call that heartbreak. But heartbreak has another side: it’s a forced hush, where something ancient has a chance to speak. And speak it did, though not in linear sentences. I found my
reliable psychic insights rushing in—a collage of images, voices, bodily sensations, entire narratives unfolding in my mind’s eye. It was as though the dying-time lessons had pulled back a veil, letting me see into dimensions I’d previously glimpsed only in flashes. There, unconditional love whispered, “You were never truly closed off. You only believed yourself to be.”
Over time, that belief in a gaping hole turned into a moment-to-moment apprenticeship—learning that maybe the heart isn’t a fortress that cracks, but a threshold that expands. We are given opportunities to learn from the grief of letting go of anyone or anything, releasing our grip
where it must, not stuff the pain of grief somewhere or conquer it.
I’d add that we must learn love in the same breath—to let it seep into the raw places.
Instead of fending off fear, we invite it to speak. Instead of fleeing the hush, we rest there, listening to the voice of those loved ones who have 'crossed over' echoing in the space where we thought we were alone.
And so, after all those goodbyes, after leaving one life behind and trying to find myself in another, I’ve slowly discovered that I don’t need to find myself so much as be found by the ancient part of me that has always known. The part that sees, hears, senses across spectrums, bridging realms of the living and the ascended with an open, unguarded heart.
Now, in this current alignment—this curious peace I’ve stumbled upon—I’m choosing to pour these insights into a new creation: “The Murmur & The Muse.” I want this podcast to be a cozy living room for soul-drenched conversation, an unhurried space where we break the habit of turning away from life’s biggest mysteries and toughest lessons. Where we speak of aspects born of intuitive insights and dysfunctional
fear-based patterns that are dying as truth spreads its light, and in so doing, learn about truly living. Where we stand at the threshold of fear and truth, acceptance, surrender, and love, and realize these are not warring forces but ingredients necessary for personal alchemy.
So, to anyone out there who’s carried that sense of a wide-open wound or awakened in the night with visions that refuse to be dismissed, I say: Welcome Home. The bullet train is always on schedule; fear is always hungry but truth remains ever present. And so, too, is your capacity for wonder. For me, it took crossing oceans, releasing the fleshy bodies of
beloveds, and entering a hush so profound it rearranged my soul. That hush is the midwife of the insights you’re about to meet—insights that might nudge you into your own unstoppable unbecoming becoming.
May each conversation I share whether through my new podcast or blog, remind you that your heart was never closed.
May the
synergy of acceptance and surrender guide us toward a love that abides, even when any kind of an ending, or the unthinkable arrives on time. And may the memory of those who’ve gone before us lend their courage to our voices now, so we can say, with honesty and humility: We are here to learn, to open, to love—while we can and as we are.
